


i'm so confused, am i a normal person?

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Coda, Episode Tag, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 12:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18591001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Now that he's healed, now that his family has been taken away, now that he has a future, he wants to convince himself that he can be normal with Maria, but he's not normal. He never has been, and he never will be.Coda to 1x13





	i'm so confused, am i a normal person?

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are from _Normal Person_ by Arcade Fire.

When he places the guitar back on the stand, he’s not sure he’s ready to talk about everything, but he’s ready to talk about enough. He’s normal again, for a given version of it. There are no more alien threats and thanks to Jesse Manes, there are no more aliens, period, outside of him, Isobel, and Max. He doesn’t even have to use his powers, because that means he can be like everyone else in Roswell. His hand is normal, he can _be_ normal, and he forces a smile at Maria because she doesn’t know about that dark pit in his head that’s been consuming him these last few weeks.

She doesn’t know anything about aliens. She can be his normal.

“Let’s talk,” he says.

Maria’s eyes are on his hand and when she opens his mouth, he anticipates her question (which he suspects he’s going to have to go with faith healer as an answer, ironic as that might be after Texas). She opens her mouth, fumbling with her necklace and fidgeting, but when she speaks, it’s not what Michael expects at _all_.

“Are you still in love with Alex?”

He’d sat there and played the guitar for her, his healed hand on display, and her question is about Alex? “What? Maria, I…” He reaches out for her, but she leans back, her eyes still on his hand.

“Are you still in love with Alex?” she asks again, her tone flatter than before. 

He could lie. “It’s Alex,” he says, deciding he wants to skirt the truth.

That he loves Alex, that he’s always going to love Alex, but he’s a reminder of all the pain that’s crushing Michael. He’s a reminder of the broken hand that’s healed, of the fiery wreck at Caulfield, of aliens and all the awful things humanity has done to them, of the pain of someone walking away from you.

Maria’s face twists up and she looks away. “So, you are.”

Michael knows this is going to go off the rails _fast_. “Yeah, but I like you!”

“You like me, but you love him. Why are you here, Guerin?”

It’s easy. It’s safe. It’s somewhere that he can be happy and normal and not have to feel pain and after the last week, he doesn’t think he can handle pain like that without completely falling apart. He doesn’t know how to tell her that, though, because he can’t tell Maria about Caulfield or Noah or Max healing him or … or anything. Unless he decides to tell her the truth and then what? Then, she’ll know just as much as everyone else. Then she’ll be just as fraught and complicated and…

Fuck, he’s an asshole.

He takes a step back with the weight of the epiphany.

 _Coward_ , his inner voice accuses and it sounds a lot like Alex Manes. 

“It’s easy, being with you.” Michael feels the lump in his throat, because he still feels like he wants just this sliver of happiness, doesn’t he deserve just that moment where everything doesn’t have to _hurt_? 

Maria’s face folds with sympathy and she reaches over for his healed hand. She still hasn’t asked, but Michael doesn’t think she’s going to, at this point. “I’d make a joke here about being easy,” she says, her eyes teary, “but I don’t think that’s the mood. Big question. Are things completely done with Alex?”

He shakes his head slowly, staring at her with the eyes of a guilty man who knows he’s been caught. No matter what happens with Alex, he knows that he’s not about to get another one of those kisses with Maria, at least not now. 

“No,” he says.

His normal is quickly evaporating. 

“I think you should go,” Maria says, her eyes still on his healed hand. He has the feeling that if he stays, she’s going to start asking questions that he doesn’t know how to answer.

He fights back the growing hysteria that’s clawing against the walls of denial he’s built up as he gets back in his truck and speeds his way back to the Airstream, unable to look back unless he’s willing to let the burning humiliation eat him whole. When he arrives at the junkyard, he sees a figure on the horizon in one of his chairs, sunlight glinting off silver zippers and reflecting off black leather. Michael stands, stunned, when he realizes the gravity of this. Alex dressed up for Michael, for the talk that he’d promised to have with him.

That guilt, that roiling anger and bitterness is coming around. Why can’t he just be normal? If Max had forced him to be healed, if his hand is normal and he can have his quiet back, why can’t he just be _normal_?

He knows as soon as he meets Alex’s gaze why he’d been so cowardly to avoid him. He’d known the minute he came back to him, crash landed right in front of him, it wouldn’t matter how much the landing had hurt – because he’d still be alive and still so very much in love. 

“Hey,” Michael says, his voice rough and his insides twisting and burning with too many emotions he can barely name, let alone place.

“I didn’t think you were going to come.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Michael admits, wishing he didn’t sound so flippant and like such an asshole as a defense mechanism. He doesn’t normally do this with Alex, but he feels like he might as well really crash and burn. He’s running his hands over his sides, figuring that he’s fucked things up with Maria today, why not do the same with Alex? “I went to the Wild Pony to see Maria, I kissed her,” he admits, and Alex takes a step back, hurt. “I wanted something _easy_ , I wanted something that felt good, I’m so tired of hurting…”

He flexes his hand in front of him, healed and new, like he’s still getting used to the fact that this part of him has _stopped_ aching. 

Instead of looking at him with wariness and suspicion, Alex stares at him with wonder. He still looks hurt, but it’s like seeing Michael’s healed hand has suddenly rendered everything else unimportant.

“Your hand,” Alex breathes out, staring at it in reverent disbelief and Michael doesn’t know what to say. “You finally let Max heal it?”

“I didn’t exactly get a choice,” he admits, “but yeah. I got to play music again,” he admits. “It stopped hurting, it stopped reminding me of …” He glances at Alex, and he thinks maybe he’s making up new reasons to avoid Alex. He’d insisted on keeping the damage to put a block between them and the minute it got taken away, he’d tried to be normal and take up with the one person in his life who didn’t know his deep, dark, dirty secrets.

Don’t use his powers, don’t be in love with the guy who screws you up, don’t be broken, _don’t be an alien_. Most important of all, don’t be in pain.

Maybe what Michael is forgetting is that the pain means he’s alive, that he’s survived. His hand had been a reminder not to have hope in humanity, but it had been borne of the greatest connection to a human he’s ever made. Caulfield will still burn in his nightmares every night, but so will his mother’s love and approval beside it. 

“Why’d you go to Maria?” Alex asks, hurt. “You said you’d come back and we’d talk. You told me you’d be here.”

He's just so tired of _hurting_.

“Everything feels like an open wound around you and Max can’t heal them all,” Michael says, his eyes closed, because it’s being weak to say it. He knows that he’d treated Maria badly by going to her while leaving this door open with Alex, but in that selfish moment, he’d just wanted to be happy. He didn’t want to have to think about all the horrible things that have happened. 

“Maybe he can’t heal them all,” Alex agrees, “but we can work together on healing them so you come back stronger.”

He reaches out for Michael’s hand, sliding his calloused fingers slowly over his wrist. When they rest over his pulse point, Michael feels the flutter of his heartbeat kicking into high gear, but he keeps moving his fingers upwards until their fingertips are pressed together and then Alex slides his fingers just to the right of Michael’s, folding them down.

It’s _just like his mother_ had held onto him…

He closes his eyes as he feels the sun warm the back of his neck, drifting forward until his forehead is pressed to Alex’s, breathing in and out as he feels the warmth at their two points of connection. Michael is healed, his past wiped away by fire, his mind willfully trying to deny everything else.

He needs to look to the future, but he’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to cut away the ties he has with Alex.

Maybe he doesn’t need to.

He opens his mouth to tell Alex that he’s willing to try to face the pain when something goes through him that he’s felt before, only days ago, and his denial kicks right back into place.

Michael freezes when that icy, numb sensation passes through him. “Max,” Michael breathes out, his eyes flickering open in a panic. He squeezes Alex’s hand before drawing it away, his panicked heart pounding against his chest. “I have to, I need to…” He’s starting to drift away, but Alex shakes his head, a fierce determination in his eyes.

He knows what this feeling is. He knows. He knows, but he can’t accept it. He has to _go_.

“I’m coming with you.” Alex doesn’t say _this time_ , but Michael hears it.

He should say no. He should stop dragging Alex into this spiral of complicated, fraught, awful things, but he also knows that surviving these things together will make them stronger. It will change them and then they will come out the other side different, but both undergoing the same test.

“Let’s go,” Michael says as he gets his keys.

Even with a healed hand, even with his alien past wiped off this earth, he’s never going to be normal. He's not sure he’s ready for anything right now, but for the first time since he was seventeen, he lets that glimmer of hope rekindle in his heart and there’s not a single scar on his hand to crush that dream. 

For now, he thinks, that’s enough.

Tomorrow, maybe that hope will blossom again into something new, but for all that he might have more powers, seeing the future isn't one of them, so he'll have to take it as it comes.


End file.
